All in the lust for money, to get gold.
Why, lie, rob, if it must be, murder.
The Pope, R. Browning.
A day later—the second day after the murder in fact—Inspector Woods sat at his desk, and surveyed the notes he had made to sum up his estimate of the case. He felt satisfaction and a vague excitement, for at last the mists were beginning to clear away. His meditations, and patient getting together of little pieces of information, were achieving something. He now had a definite conception of the crime in his mind, which he felt sure was correct.
Just as the watcher in the street had looked from the staircase into the illuminated room opposite, so Woods was seeing mentally that room, and gradually, in his imagination, events seemed to enact themselves before his eyes.
Woods was an able man. He had quick perceptions, the power of fitting things together swiftly. He had imagination, and could visualize scenes with extraordinary clearness, and sometimes he allowed his imagination to set this power to work in connexion with a crime. He had now reached this stage in the investigation of the “flat murder”, as the Ewing case had come to be called, and he deliberately evoked before his mental vision the scene which his fragmentary knowledge enabled him to reconstruct.
The inquest had been held that morning, and certain points had been made clear. The medical evidence showed definitely that Simon Ewing had been struck down where the body was found, on the hearth beside his chair. Dr. Carr’s first conclusions were corroborated. Ewing had been seated in his chair, he had risen to his feet and had been struck on the head, and had pitched forward heavily to the ground. Ten or eleven subsequent blows had been showered on him as he lay prostrate. There was nothing clenched in his hands, which were uninjured, though much stained with blood from the head wounds. The position of the first heavy blow showed that he had been leaning forward, with his head slightly turned to the left.
The complete orderliness of the flat, especially of the drawing-room, showed that there had been no struggle, no alarm. After Nurse Edwards had gone out Ewing had been alone in his drawing-room, presumably writing, for the bureau was open, his writing-board laid out by his chair, and the lid off the ink-stand. A sheet of paper, with the date written on it, lay on the blotter. The pen lying beside it had made a blurred trail across the sheet. Then a ring had come at the bell, as was proved by the evidence proffered by Doreen and Anne Godfrey. The murderer had rung that bell, the time showed that clearly. The two Godfreys had heard the sound of it ringing when Henry Godfrey entered his aunt’s flat. Henry himself had not noticed it, but his wife and sister were positive. Less than ten minutes later had come the crash and thud on the ceiling. It was therefore certain that whoever rang the bell of the upper flat had been admitted at that time, presumably by Simon Ewing himself.
As in the famous Wallace case, there were “no signs of forcible entry, no fingerprints, no marks of blood anywhere else in the house.”
The recollection of that mysterious case recurring to his mind suddenly gave Woods pause. Would it have been possible, as had been suggested in the Liverpool murder, for the assailant to have undressed in the bathroom, gone down and committed the murder naked, and then returned to the bathroom to wash off any traces, and to dress again in his unstained clothes? The fact that the towels in the bathroom, the soap, and sponge were all dry was not conclusive, for a cunning murderer would bring whatever he needed with him, foreseeing that no clue must be left. If this theory were correct it would account for the man’s appearance, his being free from bloodstains, and perfectly tidy and neat. It would also explain his descending from the upper part of the house.
Against it must be set the fact that it involved a complete change in the time-table Woods had drawn up. To undress, wash, and dress again would require probably half an hour. Therefore, if this theory were to be entertained, it followed that the ring at the bell, heard by the Godfreys, and even the crash overhead must have been deliberate fakes, intended to falsify the time of the murderer’s entry and of the murder itself.
Woods felt this was probably too far-fetched, and dismissed the idea from his mind for the time being as involving too high a degree of improbability.
The question then arose, how had the murderer got in? Had he entered from the street, or had he been concealed, either in the flat itself or in the upper part of the staircase leading to the empty flats above? Henry Godfrey had said he saw no one ahead of him in the street, and certainly he had not noticed anyone going up the front steps which led both to Mr. Ewing’s lower front door and to Mrs. Dutton’s. It was wet and he had his umbrella, and the murderer had been up the staircase, and actually ringing at the upper bell by the time Henry was admitted to his aunt’s front door.
It was therefore not impossible that the man had either simply been a little before Henry or had escaped his notice.
On the other hand, had he been waiting on the upper staircase? The objection there was that to be out of sight of the nurse leaving the flat meant that the man must have been right round the next bend in the stairs. There, if unseen, he also could not see. He would hear the door of the flat open and shut, but it was difficult to see how he could be absolutely positive that it was the nurse who had left and that there was no one with Mr. Ewing. A prolonged watch, from some place where he could definitely see who went in and out, was far more plausible.
Or—another possibility—had he gained access to the flat earlier in the afternoon, and remained hidden in that upstairs room? From there he could see both Nurse’s room and down the staircase to the front door. If anyone had been able to do that, the difficulties connected with an entry made from the street door were obviated. Yet inquiries had failed to trace any pseudo workmen coming to the flat that day. The hotel staff had sent in none but the maids who habitually cleaned the flat, and Nurse Edwards was sure no one else had called. Further, this theory did not account for that ringing of the bell at five o’clock.
As to the entry from the street door, which was, as a rule, kept open in the day, but closed at night when practically no one ever called at Mr. Ewing’s flat, Nurse admitted that she had left it open behind her when she went out, for she intended to do some shopping, and foresaw she would have her hands full, and would be cumbered up with her umbrella, and did not want to have to fumble for two keys—that to the lower as well as the upper door. She had, of course, shut the upper door of the flat itself.
The murderer had therefore, on the most likely hypothesis, arrived in the street and gone straight up, thus missing Henry Godfrey’s arrival beneath the portico by a bare two, or at most three, minutes. He had rung the upper bell, and been admitted quite promptly. Simon Ewing had let the murderer in, and gone back with him to the drawing-room, or, possibly, had gone back to the drawing-room and left the man in the hall. Woods considered the latter possibility, because he believed, from the blotted sheet of paper on the writing-board, that Ewing had gone back to his writing, and had dropped the pen when startled in some way. That sheet of paper seemed to show that he had not made that inky blur simply when rising to answer the bell. He was not the sort of man to make a nervous movement of that sort merely at the quite ordinary sound of a ring at the door bell. Woods believed he had resumed his writing, when something unexpected had caused him to look up and drop his pen instantly, regardless of where it fell.
Now, from this Woods deduced two things. It was possible that the man who had been admitted was a workman, probably well known to him, who had come to do some repair to the flat. Nurse knew little of the tradespeople, but the electric fittings had lately been altered, some of the lamp plugs worked stiffly, and she knew Mr. Ewing had meant to have them attended to. Inquiries had been made at the shops where Mr. Ewing dealt, but, so far, no workman had come under any suspicion. All appeared to have been at jobs elsewhere. Still, Woods felt there was that possibility to be reckoned with. Indeed, a thief intending to burgle the flat for the jewellery might have discovered who were the tradespeople employed by Mr. Ewing, through the staff of the hotel, and have appeared at the flat in the guise of one of these workmen. How often were not householders confronted with men who had “come to have a look at the water pipes, or test the switchboard”? Five o’clock, though late, was not too late at such a busy season.
The other possibility, which Woods himself considered more likely to be a probability, was that the murderer was actually some person well known to Mr. Ewing, of his own station in life, whom he had readily admitted, and with whom he was on sufficiently easy terms to have bidden him wait a moment while he got off his letter.
In either case, it was clear what had happened next. Simon Ewing had been sitting in his big chair beside the fire. He had thrown down the pen, risen to his feet, and faced round to the man on the hearth. That man had struck, and knocked Ewing to the ground. The doctors had agreed that he had been fronting his assailant, that he had been felled, and probably stunned, with a heavy blow, and that he had fallen on his back on the hearth. The assailant had stooped down and pounced on him at once. The fact that nothing had been overturned or disarranged showed that Simon had not really moved from the place where he fell. The murderer probably realized the considerable crash, and he may have paused a few moments to see what would happen, or he may have proceeded at once to silence the prostrate figure. Simon Ewing had not cried out. So much was pretty certain. For almost at once, following on that fall, Nurse Edwards had arrived at the front door. She had given the time of her arrival as 5.15, and declared she stood there ringing and waiting patiently to be let in for three or four minutes without any apprehension of anything being wrong. The murderer’s way of meeting that, to him, ominous ringing was known. The doctors reported that a large number of blows had been showered on the head. In the short time between Nurse’s first arrival alone and her second with Godfrey, those injuries had been dealt, by a man who obviously had, in a frenzy either of self-protection or of revenge, given himself up to the utter blotting out of life.
The silence which followed upon Nurse Edwards’s first attempt at entry must have told the murderer that, beyond what he could have hoped, the person at the door had gone away. As it had been someone who actually rang, and who did not let themselves in with a key, presumably he then thought himself safe from further interruption for a while. Safe enough, in any case, to make a desperate effort to secure that for which he had committed this crime. Hastily covering the body, with the apparent intention of deceiving, if only momentarily, anyone coming into the room, and leaving it where it had fallen on the hearth, he had gone out of the room, the lights all left on behind him, and had begun his search for the jewellery. For that the jewellery was his object was proved, in Woods’s estimation, by his being in the spare-room. While he was intent on this, he must have heard the voices of Godfrey and Nurse, either as they came up the stair or as they talked together outside the flat, followed by the sound of the key in the door. Woods could hardly imagine what that man had felt. Yet he had remained cool. He had seen that his only hope lay in a gigantic bluff, and he had brought off that bluff. Emerging without haste, without disorder, he had passed the nurse, reached the door, nodded to Godfrey—had given, in fact, a perfect representation of the ordinary visitor leaving a house, and greeting politely, but briefly, someone whom he crosses as he goes out.
Yet the speed which Anne Godfrey had detected in his steps, as he ran down the last part of the flight, gave Woods a vivid insight into the feelings which must have raged for a moment in that man’s breast as he left that building.
Now, as he evoked that scene, saw the lobby, the figures in it, the man running lightly down the stairs, Woods realized definitely that there were certain very peculiar features to be considered.
The murder had been one of violence. The old man had been struck repeatedly, and about the head. A man kneeling, or leaning over the body, must have been quite deeply stained with the spurting blood. Yet the man who had emerged from the upper floor and crossed the lighted hall was not so stained. He had been turning up his coat collar and pulling down his hat, but Godfrey had noticed nothing amiss with his bare hands, or his cuffs, or his coat. Miss Godfrey corroborated this, and she had seen the man facing a bright street lamp, at close quarters.
Again, the light had been lit in the spare-room, the burnt match lay there, the candles had been moved. There were no fingerprints and no stains. The murderer had therefore worn gloves, but those gloves had been clean, they had left no bloody smears or specks. He must have slipped them on after the crime, slipped them on over his wet and sticky fingers. But, even so, it was extraordinary that he had left absolutely no drop or trace of blood in either of the rooms he had entered.
At first, Woods had considered the question of the rug. It had lain on the body, wrapped tightly round, and completely concealing it. It was stained on both sides. In the short interval which had elapsed from the moment when the Godfreys had heard the bell and the moment when Henry Godfrey lifted up that rug, it was not likely that the blood would have soaked right through the thick Persian texture. Woods believed it possible that the murderer had seized it up from the floor—perhaps it was that very action which had caused Simon Ewing to rise, startled, to his feet—had flung it over the old man, borne him to the ground, and held him stifling there until the ring at the door goaded him to smash in his victim’s head. There could be no certainty of this, however, in view of Godfrey’s statement that he had lifted the rug right off and dropped it down again. If he had dropped it with the fresher side down, the injuries would have stained that second side during the interval before the police arrived. Yet, to Woods, this seemed unlikely.
During his interview with Godfrey, he had vaguely formulated a theory, which he now felt himself in a position to test.
The inspector felt sure that, at close quarters, had he been crouching down so near the battered head, the murderer must have been spotted or stained on his own face. He recalled the aspect of the room and the position of the furniture. Reaching for his telephone, he called up the police surgeon.
“Dr. Carr?” he inquired abruptly, as soon as he had got the connexion. “I want to put a question to you with regard to Mr. Ewing’s injuries. Could those fractures have been caused by a man standing upright, and striking at him from that position? They could? I thought so! How would he reach? Oh! Well, it’s only an idea of mine, but I’ll tell you if I find it holds water.”
Dialling once more, he got through to Henry Godfrey’s office, and asked for Henry himself.
A very ill-tempered voice soon spoke to him. Henry had been hoping for a brief respite from the police he so clearly detested.
“I’m sorry to have to ring you up at your office,” said Woods apologetically. “But I thought you’d prefer I should do that rather than pay you a visit there, and there’s something I wanted to get clear at once.”
“Fire away, then”—very grumpily.
“I’ve been looking at my notes of your finding of the body. Can you recollect if you moved any of the furniture in the drawing-room before the police arrived? Did you, for instance, move any table or chair?”
A pause, while Henry evidently thought. Then he answered, rather doubtfully: “Well, I rather think, now you call it to my mind, that I did. I believe there was a chair standing somewhere near the body. I think I moved it when I pushed past the nurse to get to the body.”
“Can you be more definite than that, Mr. Godfrey? Try to throw your mind back, and visualize what you saw.”
“I am trying”—with irritability in every note. A pause again, and then, more decidedly: “Yes, now it’s come back to me quite distinctly. There was an ordinary sort of chair, not an arm-chair, by the hearth. I pushed it back.”
“In what direction?”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Well, then, I took hold of it and pushed it behind me, to the right, away from the fireplace and towards the cabinet on the right.”
“Thank you, sir. That was what I wanted to know.”
Woods heard the receiver slammed down, but he cared nothing for Godfrey’s antagonism and ill-temper. Dashing down the receiver, he seized his hat and hastened off to the flat. It had been left, after the police investigations, exactly as the police notes, reinforced by photographers, had shown it to have been originally, before the removal of the body to the mortuary. Woods went at once to the hearth. There stood the chair he had noticed, a good, solid, heavy mahogany chair, one of four ranged about the room. It had square-sided, rather sharp-ended legs. It was placed with its front legs towards the hearth, its back legs towards the middle of the room. Woods had noted the fact that Godfrey had admitted shifting the chair to get to the body. Woods did not therefore scruple to pick it up, since he knew that Henry had changed its original position. He swung it first, in his hand, feeling the weight and realizing that it was an adequate weapon. Then, reversing it, he looked carefully at the legs. The police had reported them to be stained from their close proximity to the corpse. Blood had spattered beyond this chair on to the fire-irons and coal scuttle, and on to the brown paper which had covered the waste-paper basket and the japanned box. But Woods, looking now with his theory in his mind, saw at once that the front legs were stained on their inner surfaces only. The back legs were different. One was almost clear, but the other was stained on all four sides and quite deeply. Glancing now at the underneath of the seat, he saw there, too, dark spots and blotches. Woods had found what he had been seeking. He was sure that this was the weapon. The murderer had not knelt, he had stood upright, he had kept his foot on the breast of the old man, and he had dealt blow after blow at his head with the sharp end provided by the solid leg of the chair. In that way, repeated blows would inflict the deadly injuries, while the murderer, standing at his full height, and with the seat of the chair interposed between him and his victim, would get few or no stains on either hands or face.
Woods gave a sigh of satisfaction at having put one piece of his puzzle into place. He knew now how the murder had been done. He was sure he also knew why. He believed he knew by whom. Surely, with a little more effort, he could bring his belief into line with proof?